In July 2026, Greenpeace filed a landmark legal petition in the Netherlands against JBS, the largest animal flesh corporation in the world, demanding transparency regarding how its $6bn expansion plan aligns with duties toward climate, nature, and human rights.
Dutch courts will examine whether the company complies with national “duty of care” laws and its own publicly stated targets. Lawyers noted that this petition opens a new frontier in climate litigation, creating a precedent for legal actions against animal agriculture, which is the principal cause of deforestation and a major source of methane emissions.
At the heart of the action is a lack of disclosure regarding expansion in Nigeria, where JBS intends to invest $2.5bn in six massive slaughterhouses. Civil society organisations highlight that scant information exists on whether the company assessed the ecological and social ramifications, which threaten smallholder farmers, food security, and land-use priorities, whilst locking in vast amounts of methane emissions from exploited farmed animals.
Richard Brown, legal counsel at Greenpeace International, said to the Guardian, “The primary objective is to challenge JBS’s business model and expansion model… We have a suspicion that they’re flying blind and not pulling together the information they need to understand the impacts…We say that if you come to the Netherlands, you have to play by Dutch rules and be held to account to Dutch standards… Ultimately this is about a global conglomerate and how its activities should be limited within safe planetary boundaries.”
JBS relocated its headquarters to the Netherlands last year to list on the New York Stock Exchange and raise capital, enabling the founding family’s Batista brothers, Joesley and Wesley Batista, to boost their ownership stake. However, the move subjected the business to stricter European transparency regulations.
The lawsuit stems from the allegations that the company repeatedly failed to meet environmental pledges in Brazil. JBS recently abandoned its net zero by 2040 target and omitted methane emissions from cows in its recent sustainability report.
